Pre/Power Amplifiers

While sawing Electrocompaniet's AW 800 M power amplifier is probably not advisable, doing so would admittedly bring some advantages. Not only would you get even better channel separation from dividing the amp right back to the mains socket - not that the stereo amp is exactly lacking in this respect - the resulting monoblock amps would hopefully be more manageable than the stereo model. It may not be huge, but the 800's 55kg mass puts unpacking and placing it firmly in 'phone a friend' territory.

Well, it's time to stop eyeing that Makita power tool and musing 'What if…', as the £12,100 AW 300 M seen here is, to all intents and purposes, a ready-sliced AW 800 M. The rated output is the same and the dimensions are roughly half that of the stereo amp, while the price per brace is only slightly more than that of the stereo model, given the extra casework and power supply provision involved.

Hide And Seek

But for those of us of a 'Billy no mates' persuasion, these mono amps have another distinct advantage: at 30kg apiece, they're more convenient as a one-person installation project. Even I was capable of levering each AW 300 M into position by the loudspeaker [see boxout, p63]. Ah yes, positioning… The long but narrow enclosure of the AW 300 M makes it a tempting prospect for 'next to the speaker' locations, where it will present a face to the world that's surprisingly compact, at just 21cm wide and 29cm tall.

Indeed, if you wanted to place the amp out of sight - though I can't see why you would, given the fascia's combination of gloss black and golden detailing - it would be easy enough. Its largest dimension, front to back, is just 49cm, so it may slot in sideways behind some larger speakers. Just bear in mind that although the amp sits on a trio of feet of a non-marking SuperSpike design, you'll need support beneath it on carpeted floors, purely to allow sufficient airflow. On hard wooden floors, you'll be fine.

Having a pair of loudspeakers before the listener seemingly connected only using easy-to-conceal balanced cables - the AW 300 M is XLR-input only - has a definite appeal. Certainly, that would make for a tidier installation than having a large power amp on a floor-level rack between the speakers or running thick speaker cables around the room.

Split Personality

Effectively dividing the £19,500 AW 800 M 'Reference Monoblock Power Amplifier' in two to create these smaller units looks to have been a relatively simple task, given that amplifier is actually a stereo design bridgeable into mono, as we noted in our earlier review. That would allow the user to start with a single amp, most probably fed from the company's £3599 EC 4.8 MKII preamp - which is how it was reviewed - and then add another to create a much more powerful system.

The AW 300 M offers its own upgrade route, this mono amp having two sets of terminals for those wanting to bi-wire their speakers, together with a 'daisy-chain' XLR output to allow an additional monoblock to be added for full bi-amplification. The simplicity of the AW 300 M makes it as fine a visual match for the EC 4.8 MkII - Electrocompaniet's only preamp, with its minimal 'diamond' of buttons for volume and source selection - as it is an electrical one. The power amp has just an on/standby button, the main power switch being to the rear, the colour of this changing from red (for standby) to blue (on) after about 10 seconds, or blinking red if the amp's protection has been triggered.

Sense And Sensibility

Electrocompaniet's logo also illuminates blue to show all is well, with a little button hidden under the front edge of the amp killing the front panel illumination if required. A second button located in the same area toggles a signal-sensing auto standby function, which operates after 30 minutes of no input, and will override 12V trigger connections from the preamplifier if you choose to use them.

The design here is, unsurprisingly, closely related to that of the AW 800 M, using the company's direct-coupled high open-loop bandwidth topology, here enhanced with an output stage engineered to isolate the input and driver stages from the load, in the quest for the lowest-possible distortion. The power supply uses both DC and RF filtering at its input, while the 800VA transformer is magnetically and electrostatically shielded, its output smoothed by a 100,000µF bank of 100V reservoir capacitors.

The main amplifier section, rated at 300W/8ohm and doubling into 4ohm [see PM's Lab Report, p65], is mounted in its own enclosure, with heatsinks on either side, and the matt black casework is braced with a pair of external bars, running front to back, for greater rigidity.

As with all of Electrocompaniet's products, the AW 300 M is built in-house in south-west Norway, in the highly automated facility of parent company Westcontrol, with quality assured by keeping everything from populating and flow-soldering circuitboards to final checking under one roof.